Writing can help you if you can't afford a therapist to help you

 Therapists (good ones) tend to be very expensive. So, unless you can find a good one (on a sliding scale) that fits your budget it can be very hard to get the counseling you or your family need.

I can remember going to a marriage family counselor in my 30s which was my first experience with counseling trying to prevent a divorce because we were then raising 3 children and then we had another so we then had 4. Of course they are all grown up now because I will be 75 soon but this was my first experience with going to a counselor myself (even though I had studied to be a psychologist in my 20s for several years in college. However, my son was born and I got married rather than becoming psychologist. When my girlfriend got pregnant we eventually decided to marry before my son was born and I had to go to work to support us all instead of finishing college.

However, in my 30s was the first time we visited a counselor (a marriage family counselor) (about 10 years later that wife and I divorced but by then most of our kids were at least 20 years old and only one was really young. Even the very youngest now is 34 and married so everything turned out okay for everyone despite the divorce. In fact all my kids are married now except for one. 

Then in 1995 I remarried and then in 1999 my new wife's mother died in Spring of 1999. However, my wife was completely unprepared for this event and I nearly lost my wife to her grief (even though we then had a 3 year old daughter at the time. So, it was touch and go keeping my wife alive after her mother's death for a couple of years. But, going to a grief counselor was one of the ways she made it through this.

Often when people are too attached to a parent they self destruct when that parent dies. I had been through this awful experience with my father in 1985 and the worst thing that happened to me regarding my father's death was I divorced my  wife partly because of the death of my father by 1994.

So, losing a father or mother can easily end one's marriage. For example, my wife's father divorced her mother when his father died because he couldn't cope with the loss of this father who was a larger than life famous person. So, this sort of thing happens a lot.

So, writing down your feelings and reading them back to yourselves can help to heal the deep deep pain of the loss of a father or mother or lover or spouse that you cannot live without.

Trying to find a way forward isn't easy but often it is possible if you are careful enough how you navigate your lives.

By God's Grace